


For Your Love

by jellyfishconfetti



Series: For Your Love Series [1]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Adam and Shiro love each other, Angst with a Happy Ending, Multi, Shiro (Voltron) Dies, Shiro (Voltron)-centric, but idk if the song actually describes the fic well..., but my beta did, i didnt cry, i just really like the title, sorta - Freeform, the title is from a song, very much
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-10
Updated: 2018-09-09
Packaged: 2019-07-10 11:28:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,899
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15948434
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jellyfishconfetti/pseuds/jellyfishconfetti
Summary: "You're going to die." Adam says one more time and when Shiro looks into his eyes, he sees nothing but pity and agony.Shiro's life through snapshots.





	1. Chapter 1

Shiro is diagnosed at age seventeen, in the beginning of summer.

He knows that the doctor wasn't expecting this.

He knows it wasn’t supposed to be like this when he went in for his yearly checkup.

He knows that he is going to die because if it, can feel it, poisoning his blood and filling his mouth with saliva—

 _Oh God I'm going to throw up,_ he thinks and turns his head, swallowing the urge and making his face impassive as the doctor speaks.

"You have a severe muscle degenerative disease...." The doctor of the Garrison almost mumbles, flipping through the now extensive amount if papers in Shiro's chart. "I'm sorry Mr. Shirogane, but it looks like you have less than a decade before you will start to go downhill at a severe rate. Even with medication, in the next five years alone you will--"

Shiro can’t listen, can’t focus, can’t believe what he is hearing because inside his head is filling with white noise static, echoing hollowly in his chest, snow, ice cold, flowing through his veins.

He’s dying.

He’s dying.

He’s dying.

"You're dying." Adam says when Shiro tells him and they are on separate sides of the room.

Shiro can’t look up from where he's staring at the floor, counting the tiles and not the years he has left. He pretends his hands aren’t shaking and that he doesn't know he is most likely still in shock.

"You're dying—" Adam says again. " _Takashi_ —" His voice breaks.

Shiro's head snaps up, and Adam, so heartbroken, chokes on a sob and crumples to his knees, hands pressing to his mouth and shoulder shaking so bad, it looks as if he is falling apart.

Shiro jolts across the space of their dorm. He crashes to his knees in front of Adam, who flings his arms around Shiro's neck, tugging him in, reeling him in with so much force his cheek is crushed painfully to his collarbone. Shiro grabs back just as hard and clenches his hands with a white-knuckle grip into Adam’s shirt. He feels his whole wall splinters and suddenly, tears well to his eyes.

"I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry—" Adam chants, lips on his temple and Shiro hunches even further into him, presses his forehead into his shoulder and tries to hold himself together, but can’t stop the way he shatters into a million pieces and he hurts so much why has this happened—

Adam shifts him up, fumbling, still shaking do much, and his mouth presses to Shiro's and Shiro can’t help but sob and both their cheeks are wet and they're both frantically pulling each other closer and yet it's never enough.

Shiro tightens his arm, creates a steel band around Adam's torso.

"You're going to die." Adam says one more time and when Shiro looks into his eyes, he sees nothing but pity and agony.

***

"I think you should drop out of the Garrison, Takashi." Adam says to him at the age of nineteen. Shiro stops from where he’s looking at the engineering specs of the new ship he'll be flying and glances up.

"What?" Shiro asks.

Adam's lips form a thin line and he looks so achingly angry for a moment as he stares at Shiro's latest medical document. There’s no new news on it, nothing particularly bad other than serving as a bitter reminder that though there is no bad news, there is also no good news, only what is to be expected. The anger drains away just as fast as it came on and he is left looking at deep bone-weary exhaustion carving harsh lines under Adam’s eyes and pulling at the corners of his mouth. Shiro aches for him.

"Adam. Why would you say that?" He asks again.

More silence and Shiro opens his mouth to speak again but is cut off.

"You're only going to make yourself worse if you keep pushing as hard as you do!" Adam snaps.

Shiro has to take a moment to process this, let it sit and be digested before he responds, but tensions have been running high and he doesn’t wait long enough and knows his answer is rife with emotion.

"Make myself _worse_ —?!" He exclaims incredulously.

"You need to be relaxing, looking for a cure—!!"

"Adam! You know there is no cure for this and you _know_ the Garrison means—"

"More than your life does, Takashi?! You only have a few more years before you're going to be permanently bedridden—"

"And I should spend those years doing what I love—!"

"Even at the cost of your own life?!" Adam explodes.

They're in each other’s faces, eyes angry and Adam threw his glasses off some time during the fight, and without that barrier, Shiro can see every emotion that much easier.

Shiro is angry. More angry than he’s been in a long time and it sings in his veins like lava, burning his limbs. He can’t stand it.He takes a deep breathes through his nose and leans back, willing his shoulders to relax, willing to come off as non-threatening as possible. Adam only grows more tense.

"My happiness—" Shiro starts.

"Means nothing in comparison to your life, Takashi." Adam finishes and grabs his jacket and slams out of their dorm before Shiro can reply.

Papers flutter in the wake and Shiro let's out a wordless shout of anger.

***

Three days after his twentieth birthday, he meets the most skilled young pilot he has even seen at a public school a few miles away from the Garrison base.

He steals his car.

Adam can't stop laughing and nearly wheezes himself into fainting when Shiro tells him, and even though Adam keeps teasing him about that for the next week, Shiro can’t stop smiling, because that is the first time since he was diagnosed that Adam has laughed like that.

It was good.

Too bad it didn’t last.

They took a break last month, only for a few weeks before Shiro caved and crawled back to Adam, saying that he would be more cautious of his health and take Adam’s opinion into full consideration rather than just ignoring it right away. Adam on the other hand needs to understand why Shiro does what he does, but—

"Can you please just...take more time, Takashi?" Adam says one night, curled to his side and face pressed to the white of Shiro's sleep shirt. "Slow down and take a breath. Enjoy it?"

Shiro wants to say yes, so desperately wants to agree and tell him he can do that one thing, but every time he stops running full tilt, eases to a light jog, he can feel time catching up, the ever looming threat of his imminent death breathing hot and heavy on his neck before he speeds back up and ignores the burning of his muscles.

He says nothing and eventually they both fall asleep, where Shiro dreams of seeing himself in a mirror, gaunt and ashen, skin paper thin with blue veins underneath.

When he looks into his eyes, they're dead.

He wakes up drenched in sweat, but Adam is already awake and Shiro can hear him clattering around in their kitchenette, so he pretends he didn’t have the dream _—the nightmare oh God that's what you're going to become—_ and he pretends he doesn’t remember the conversation from last night either.

When he emerges from the shower, Adam just looks at him sadly.

Shiro tries to ignore it, tries to pretend that he isn’t purposefully ignoring every instinct in his body telling him he’s ruining their relationship, but  he’s never been good at lying and when he reaches for his shirt, his whole body tightens as if touched by a live wire; he realizes the full impact of everything.

He collapses to the ground and Adam is filling his vision, still sleep rumpled, mouth moving frantically.

His vision goes black.

***

When he comes too, he’s hooked up to oxygen and back in the medical bay of the Garrison building.

He hates it. Hates the white walls. Hates the tubs and wires hooked up to him. Most of all though, he hates the familiarity.

"Your muscles tightened up to a point where you couldn’t breathe. The lack of oxygen made you pass out." Adam looks like shit. The first thing Shiro had told him, when he saw him slumped and asleep in the chair.

There’s a pause and Adam bows his head, his lips pressed softly to the knuckles of Shiro's hand, propped in Adam's.

"You would have died if I hadn't reacted when I did." Adam's voice breaks and the hand Adam is holding has tears on it. He stares at those tiny droplets and feels something inside him break.

Shiro lifts his other hand and presses it to Adam's cheek, runs his thumb on his cheek bone and smears his tears into his skin.

"Takashi. You could have died." Adam says and breaks into sobs.

Shiro knows.

He knows this.

That morning he knew that something was wrong, knew immediately after their conversation the night before something was going to disturb the tentative peace they had developed.

Shiro can feel it in the marrow of his bones now, his death, on coming and unstoppable.

"I'm fine." He says instead and Adam shakes his head, tears spilling because he knows Shiro is lying.

***

Shiro is outfitted with an electroshock wristband that reacts when his muscles tighten to a certain point, by sending a pulse of electricity that relaxes them back to their normal state.

"Very high tech! Developed specifically for you!" The doctor says, chest puffed out in pride, but all Shiro feels is that he has been cuffed by his own body.

Adam is over the moon that the Garrison, in light of the medical revelation, has lessened his workload.

"This is good, Takashi! You're already the best in the Garrison. Think of this as a reward, time to relax." He says as Shiro stares at the time slot which used to be occupied with him teaching hand-to-hand combat with the new Garrison recruits.

Shiro doesn’t say anything, but there’s something cold growing in his chest. His breath’s an icy mist and nods, closing his eyes and imagining himself not chained down.

***

He's twenty-one when he hears he’s being considered for the Kerberos mission.

He doesn’t say anything to anyone, keeps the news close to his chest and hopes that though it isn’t completely confidential, hope that his higher ups do the same.

They don’t, and Adam finds out.

"You need to tell them no, Takashi." He tells Shiro.

Shiro doesn’t though, doesn’t say anything to anyone in fact, about this, because though this seed of hope in his chest threatens to bloom and choke him with its growth, it is beautiful. And he hopes so dearly it will burst with color and he will be part of something so ground breaking and life changing for the entire world.

So he doesn’t say anything, nothing about the pain in his shoulders, or the way the electroshocks are growing more and more common by the month because—

Sam Holt threatens not to go if Shiro isn’t the pilot; his voice thick with authority, as if he’s not used to it. Their commanders are dead silent, speechless in this revelation because though Shiro may be expendable and replaceable in their eyes, Samuel Holt is not.

Shiro stays silent.

They all know he's going anyways.

***

“How important am I to you, Takashi?”

_Adam._

“...don’t expect me to be here when you come back.”

***

He's twenty-two when he leaves on the Kerberos mission. Adam isn’t there. Adam is never there, but Keith is, eyes bright and mouth curved in that soft smile.

"Come back soon, Shiro." Keith says softly and Shiro drags him in for a hug because for once in his life, he has a brother.

Keith just makes an annoyed sound but clutches to the thick fabric of the space suit.

He convinces himself that he doesn’t long to kiss Adam one more time, before he leaves.

The bracelet sends out a shock.

***

They leave the atmosphere.

They leave their families.

They're captured by the Galra.

***

_Oh God. Oh God. It's gone it's gone it's gone it's gone it's gone it's gone—_

_Adam Adam Adam I'm sorry I'm sorry I love you I love you I love you I love you..._

_You were right—_

***

_Voltron_

***

He’s twenty-three when he crashes the Galra cruiser to earth. The Garrison immediately captures him, and he knew this would happen, has read the procedure for an occurrence like this himself, but his mind feels hazy and the air is so good and the Galra, they're coming, and he has to warn earth--

The world viciously and suddenly goes black even though he fights _so hard_ and when he wakes, he’s surrounded by faces he doesn’t know except— _Keith_.

They’re in a shack that Shiro remembers only slightly, but he can see the history etched into the walls: The ticks running along the door line, the sun-bleached photos on the wall in the back, the clothes that he tries not to think about—

 “Are you sure that I can wear this?” Shiro asks because he knows how important they are to Keith, knows that these are some of the only things he has left in memory of his father.

“It’s fine.” Keith says, his voice rough, deeper than he last heard it.

Everything else happens so fast after that.

There’s Hunk, Pidge—Katie…God, she looks _just_ like Matt—and Lance.

There’s the Blue Lion.

There Arus, and the Princess of Altea and her royal advisor, Coran.

There’s the Black Lion.

Then they’re Voltron…

A mess of a team.

***

They argue with each other. Of course they do. Even when the majority of them were at the Garrison, they weren’t always with each other every single day, for weeks on end. There were breaks, times when the Cadets were allowed to go the neighboring towns and enjoy space. Times when those in charge of children could take vacations and relax with their loved ones, but now…

Now….

Now they’re all stuck in the same ship, for better or worse.

“Keith.” Shiro says, one of the few times it was just the two of them on the training deck, without the watchful eyes of Allura or Coran, or any of the other paladins. “Keith…I know this is a…a question that I know I shouldn’t ask because I lost that right when I left for Kerberos, and I know it's not your place to know, so I understand if you don’t—”

“He believed the Garrison.” Keith says and it takes a moment for Shiro to understand what he means. “Adam didn’t even question it. He—”

Keith seems to choke on the words and Shiro watches as he swallows, as if he can press the emotions burning his throat into his stomach and wait for them to dissolve.

“He believes I died.” Shiro finishes instead and—

And—

It hurts. Much more than it should, that the one he loved the most in the entire world, believed he could fail that easily.

 _Don’t blame him. The only reason Keith even had an inkling you were alive is because he could sense there was something out there, because the Blue Lion and him were connected, no matter how distant_. Shiro reminds himself, but it doesn’t change the bitter tang coating his tongue.

Keith looks angry, more angry than usual, his knuckles tight around his bayard.

“I went to him first, to tell him about the readings, but—” Keith shakes his head, fisting his hand and pressing his knuckles to his forehead, “but he was just…God, Shiro he was so sad, so torn up, _but he didn’t believe me_ , no matter what I said or showed him and without you or Adam to back me, the Garrison—”

Shiro grabs the back of Keith’s neck and pulls him in for a hug, and Keith balls his fists tight and tries to control his breathing.

Neither of them says anything, the silence only broken by their breathing, but the knowledge is still there, cloying the air.

_He didn’t believe I was alive. At all._

And for a moment, nothing hurts worse than that.

***

Shiro lets go of something after that, and for a while, it's easier to look ahead, to be in the present and forget about what could have been.

He keeps his eyes on the now and his new family.

They fight the Galra—a lot.

They form Voltron—a lot.

Life continues and Shiro hates the frequency of the shocks his prosthetic arm sends out, more aggressive than the ones from the wrist band, yet more potent, able to keep him loose for days, but he still starts to see the affects.

He’s tired all the time, no matter how long he sleeps, and he knows it's not just from the nightmares.

“Wow, Shiro!” Lance exclaims one morning and _God, how is he so peppy this early in the morning_?

Shiro looks up from where he’s eating. “What?”

“Those bags! Under your eyes, man! They could carry nearly all of team Voltron’s baggage!” Lance gestures to his own under-eyes, chest puffed up in pride. “I have this fantastic cream I got from Re’Loean as a gift—man that stuff works wonders, if you want to borrow some, some time? It's so good! I look fabulous no matter how little sleep I have been getting.”

Lance is right of course; his skin looks healthy and sun kissed even with the lack of actual sunlight.

Shiro smiles softly and tries not to think of rubbing lotion into the chapped skin of Adam’s hands during the rough, dry days of winter. Of peppering the soft delicate skin of his eyes with kisses on their few lazy nights.

“I might have take you up on that offer.” He says instead and Lance beams.

***

They fight Zarkon and it’s supposed to be the final time, the time when they are fully successful.

They are do so well, his paladins, and it—

It’s _glorious_.

But Shiro dies, and he knows the moment it happens; can feel his body evaporate as if it doesn’t exist, can feel his tether to that plane vanish, and it's like being cut loose and for once, he truly feels free of everything and he is finally allowed to _truly be happy_ —

Except Black doesn’t let him.

The Black Lion clings, grabs his soul tight and envelopes it and he gasps at the sensation of so much of—

Of—

Of everything that makes up what is and what was the Black Lion, but the quintessence that brings it to life, that has formed its very being, doesn’t act like anything else before and exists everywhere, all at once, connecting everything that has ever existed to one single point and within the Black Lion like he is, Shiro can see it, in the distance: that fade into nothing, the edge of the event horizon.

 “Why did you save me?” Shiro asks, desperately because he was ready to die.

In that one moment he was ready to let go and finally, _finally_ , be free from all that is holding him down.

 _You cannot die_. The Black Lion says. _You are too important and you have too much impact on those around you to leave. I will keep you here, until the time is right_.

Shiro shakes his head, doesn’t want to accept that he is trapped.

 _I’m sorry._ The Black Lion says and they do sound so apologetic, but their voice is set in stone, with a determined edge Shiro knows cannot be cowed _. But here you must remain_.

And here he remained, and waited, and watched.

***

Keith becomes the paladin of the Black Lion.

Shiro feels only pride.

***

He’s only a few months from his twenty-fourth birthday when he feels it, some sort of connection, a sort of tether, hair thin, connecting him to the living plane.

Shiro gasps and clutches it tightly, his excitement drawing out the Black Lion.

 _Not you._ They say. _Not you. Close, but false. They are not you._

 _A clone_.

***

He gets bits and pieces, small little snippets of the life through the clone’s eyes, the bond too tenuous to get anything really substantial.

But it's enough.

He sees fighting, sees the clone yell unjustly in times where it is unnecessary and causes nothing but unwanted tension within the paladins.

He sees Keith leave, driven to feeling pressured and unwanted by the clone’s near fanatic determination for the “cause” and nothing else.

He sees Lance grow nothing but unsure of himself.

He sees all of this yet he is stuck, unable to do anything.

***

Shiro tries to reach out once, where it was most opportune, but he’s not fast enough.

It’s enough though, his words and the fact the clone cannot remember them is enough for Lance to become suspicious, cautious in the out of character actions the clone partakes in more and more as time progresses.

Shiro just hopes that when the time is right, he will be able to act in the way Shiro knows he can.

***

He thinks a lot.

Remembers a lot.

His memories of his times with the Galra are no longer spotty at best, but rather a full and complete tale he tries not to focus on. They’re burdened, rife with blood and gore and death. His hands, even prior to the druids, took the life of so many. Him, one of the protectors of the universe, is bathed in so much blood, he doesn’t ever think he will be innocent again.

”I killed so many people.” He tells Black and he knows they are listening even though they don’t respond.

“So many have died by my hand.” Shiro sucks in a breath and stares at the horizon where the edge of everything meets the nothingness. “Maybe it would have been better if I had died in the arena.”

 _Never_. Black says, their voice a command. _Never think that_.

***

The clone tries to kill Keith, but that rush of emotion and the sudden lack of connection the clone has to Black, once again filled in by Keith is enough.

It is enough—

Shiro forces his way through, forces Keith to _see_ because if he doesn’t, especially right now, everything will be lost.

“I died, Keith.” Shiro says and the words now feel foreign on his tongue in light of Keith’s pain.

He was so ready to die—

He was so ready to die, but no one else was.

Shiro ignores that feeling, takes a deep breath and forces himself to be patient because it’s what Keith needs to desperately, to know that Shiro can _never_ hurt him, can never do anything but wish for the best when he thinks of Keith.

He does what he does best. He teaches, guides Keith to being the greatest he can be—

And thinks, _This is it. This is my legacy_.

***

Shiro is twenty-four when his soul is forced into a clone that has everything his old body had, plus months of memories that are his—

_not his, not his. The clone’s. But the clone was him, it had the same everything but there was something making him not him but God, they’re so close, so close it may as well be his._

The stump where his prosthetic was sends out a shock that jars him so badly his teeth clench to the point that when he relaxes, there’s fine powder grit scratching along his tongue.

Shiro doesn’t tell them, in the end. He knows it’s a mistake, knows it on the journey back, but also knows that the paladins are already stretched thin enough as is, with the lions at so low power, and the lack of the castle a jarring hole in all of their chests.

They don’t need anything else on their plates, so all he does is try to help in ways he can and when he arrives one earth—

 _Adam_.

***

Shiro should be twenty-eight when he arrives on earth.

But he is not.

Hunk should be able to greet his family.

But he can't.

There shouldn’t have to be worrying about space for refugees.

But there is.

Adam shouldn’t be dead—

           

 

Adam shouldn’t be dead.

But he is.

And Shiro doesn’t have time to mourn, doesn’t have the privacy to do so. He doesn’t have the time to cry, to miss or long for a lover he can no longer have, because he is now in charge of armies, in charge of fleets, in charge of strategizing and flying a ship that is barely up and running without any preliminary tests of basic functions, in charge of everything the earth depends on for survival.

And so he doesn’t.

Doesn’t mourn, doesn't long, and doesn’t cry.

Until they win.

***

Shiro is thirty-one when he reaches the point where he can no longer walk.

Shiro is thirty-one when he is completely bedridden, a gaunt shadow of what he once was.

Shiro is thirty-one when he asks the doctor for an assisted suicide.

“You can’t fucking do this, Shiro.” Keith spits, still so angry at times and Shiro smiles because it never stops being entertaining.

“Keith—” Shiro tries to say but is cut off.

“No, Shiro. Keith is right. You can’t do this when we are _so close_ to finding a cure.” Pidge snaps. “A cure, by the way, we would more than likely have if you had told us you were still sick _in the first place_.”

“Guys—”

“We’re not letting you do it.” Hunk says.

Shiro sighs, because after all this time, they still have issues listening sometimes.

“Guys…you have to understand.” He says softly. “I can feel it. Can feel it in my bones.”

There’s silence and he takes a breath, forcing the words out, because even years later, it still never gets easier to talk about.

“I’m going to die and I know I am going to die soon.”

Keith is shaking his head and Shiro raises his voice to keep from being cut off again.

“But it's okay, because I’m ready this time and you are ready and guys…I can finally be free from this burden.

“I have lived…so much longer than I thought, done so much more than imagined and loved so much more than thought possible, and I want to thank you, all of you for everything you have brought me: forgiveness, family, peace, happiness, love...everything anyone could wish for.

“I am _content_. I am finally ready….”

Shiro looks at them and tries not to cry.

He is not successful.

 Thank you, paladins. I love you.”

***

Shiro is thirty-one years and two months old when he dies in his sleep, four months before the agreed date for the assisted suicide.

The first successful cure for his disease is tested a day later.


	2. Chapter 2

 

Lance sucks on his teeth and stares at the hole in the ground, his arms are crossed and he knows he doesn't look nearly mournful enough because Hunk comes up to him, looking sad and shaken, but also weary.

"What ever you're thinking of doing, Lance, now is not the time." Hunk says.

Lance shakes his head because  _no, now is exactly the time_.

"He shouldn't have died, Hunk." He says and uncrosses his arms, looking down at his friend.

Hunk's lips thin into a flat line, but Lance ignores him, stepping away from the hole in the ground.

"And I am going to make sure that he doesn't." Lance says to himself, fingers flexing around the syringe holding the cure.

***

“I know you didn't want this.”

_ You know nothing. _

“You cared about him. Maybe even more than us considering you kept him alive for months within you.”

….

“I just need your help with this one thing. I know you can do it. I've seen it, have seen time slowed, time stopped….I just need you to go one step further for me.”

_ This is nothing but a selfish endeavor that endangers more than yourself. _

“I know, but it isn't just for me. Its for him. He can be... _ so _ much more if he wasn't bogged down with that  _ stupid genetic disease _ and we have the cure now. One Hundred percent, no chance of failure.”

_ The risk _ —

“Is worth it for him. Just one chance, that's all I need. Send me back.”

….

_ Fine. You will be the only one who will engage on this quest. The time you will be there is an unknown factor so I suggest you move quickly. _

“ _ Thank you _ . Oh God, thank you so much—”

_ Do not thank me yet, Paladin of Red, for this will be one of the most difficult tasks you have ever partaken, for not only do you risk the destruction of your reality, but also every neighboring one. Be careful. _

***

Shiro is twenty-four when his soul is forced into a clone that has everything his old body had—

_ Who is that? Why are they wearing the blue paladin armor? How did they get it? Where did they come from? _

“You fucking selfish bastard. I won't allow you to die this time.” An Altean style needle plunges into his neck and—

And—

***

Shiro is twenty-four when he is cured.


End file.
